Damon Davis (b. 1985) is a post-disciplinary, Emmy Award–winning artist who works and resides in St. Louis, Missouri. In a practice that is part therapy, part social commentary, his work spans across a spectrum of creative mediums to tell stories exploring how identity is informed by power and mythology. His first solo exhibition, Darker Gods in The Garden of Low Hanging Heavens, premiered in St. Louis in 2018, traveling to Art Basel Miami later that year. Davis has work in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Saint Louis Art Museum, and he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts as well as at the San Diego Contemporary Museum of Art.
Filmmaker Magazine selected him and Sabaah Folayan as part of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2016” for their work co-directing the critically acclaimed documentary Whose Streets? which chronicled the Ferguson uprising of 2014. In 2020, critic Ben Davis cited Davis’ project All Hands On Deck, which captured the hands of people who shaped and upheld the Ferguson movement, as one of the “100 Works of Art That Defined the Decade.”
Davis’ work has been nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award, Gotham Award and NAACP Image Award. He is the founder and creative director of St. Louis-based music label/artist collective FarFetched. Davis is a 2015 Firelight Media Fellow, 2016 Sundance Music and Sound Design Lab Fellow, 2017 TED Fellow, 2017 Root100 Honoree, 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow and 2020 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow.
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